Math with Apples Project

This week we read 'An Apple pie for Dinner' and practiced our measuring skills with an apple Math investigation.

This book is very cute! Granny Smith (pun intended) wants to bake an apple pie but  she doesnt have any apples. All she has is a basket of plums and sets off in the hope that she can trade them. The illustrations are very fairy tale like and reminded me of the amazing shadow applique my grandma used to create.

Apple Math:

Earlier in the day we had compared raisins and grapes and talked about how drying removes the water.
The goal for apple investigation was to find out how much weight an apple looses when it is dried. Mini Piwi was chief fruit weigh-person, Miss K was the data recorder and self proclaimed 'calculator  of the important stuff'.

Here's the method I wrote for the Piwis to follow

1. Have a grown-up peel, core and slice 2 apples into thin pieces.

2. Line a baking pan with baking paper and ask Mama to turn the oven on to 200 degrees

3. Weigh the slices from each apple and record the measurement for each one

 4. Lay the apple slices on the pan

5.  Ask a grownup to put the pan into the oven

6. Wait patiently :-) for about 1 hour until the apple slices are dry.

7. Ask a grown up to remove the pan from the oven at let tthe apples cool

8. Weigh all the dried apples to find their new total mass.

 9. Eat the apples!

There are so many things you could have kids calculate from this activity. We kept it fairly simple and I asked Miss K to find:

1. The total mass of the apples before they went into the oven
2. How much mass the apples had lost from the drying

Another calculation that occured to me (after we were done) was the mass of the core and/or peel we had removed.

 The Piwi's really enjoyed their snack and even Miss K declared that this kind of math was actually fun.

Mini Piwi & the Scales

There are so many nice printables for Christmas! Mini Piwi had fun with the tracing ones -she wanted to do all the ones I had printed in one go..

 

Every day this week we had at least one set of scales out for Big Sis's Math. Mini Piwi usually claimed it after our lesson and weighed everything from Christmas decorations to toys.

 

I really thought this decorating activity would be a hit but Mini Piwi is started to frustrated if a star  wasn't perfectly placed....We moved onto something else.

 

Christmas Super Shapes inspired by Team unizoomi as part of our Hands on Math projects

 

Also as part of our Hands on Math projects this week we did allsorts with Candy canes. Comparing sizes and mass and using them to measure the table.

 

 

 

Mini Piwi also became her big sis's fashion model this week and I was treated to multiple fashion shows.

 

Check out Piwi's adventures in Math this week 

 

 

 

 I am linking up to these blogs and this weeks 1+1+1=1 Tot School

 

Printable packs we were loving this week:





1plus1plus1equals1 Christmas tot pack and Nativity pack 



Christmas Printable @ Gift of Curiosity



E-book and printables

 



Christmas Hands on Math

Here are the Hands on Math activities we got up to this week...

Our hands on Math projects are something the Piwis can  work on together, and learn from even with their 4 year age gap. For more on our this see my first HOM post.

Measuring Metric Mass in Kg

We started our week with measuring mass. This year we are studying metric measurement. The Piwis were excited to play with all the different types of scales we have. Out first project was collecting items, weighing them and grouping them by their mass. The three categories: about less than 1kg, about 1 kg, and more than 1 kg.

Elf Math -measuring in grams

In order to investigate measuring mass in grams we did some 'Elf math'.
I gave the Piwi's a list of weights, the kitchen scales and a huge pile of mini candy canes. Their mission was find out how many candy canes you needed to make 25g, 100g, 150g and 200g. They tried it with little candy canes and the bigger fruit flavored ones.

Even Perry helped.....

I think Mini Piwi misheard me because it seemed like she was trying to eat her weight in candy canes.

I gave Miss K a challenge to use her results to see if she could work out how many candy canes you would need to make 500g, 1kg. Miss K didn't know it but she got an introduction to Multiplication.

Mini Piwi helped Miss with the Elf math and then used the balance to compare the weight of the big and small candy canes. She also measured the table using candy canes.

Next week we are going to solve some more real world problems with Mass like comparing masses.

Super Shapes!

Mini Piwi asked to make pictures like Team Umi Zoomi -why didn't I think of this one!!
We made lots of Christmas pictures from shapes just like Geo. We made some from our plastic tan gram shapes and others from paper. Here is Miss K's tree and Mini Piwi's snowman.

 

 

Test prep

One of our goals for the new year is practicing test taking so I encouraged Miss K to log on each day to IXL. She said she had forgotten that it was so fun and has consistently spent 20-30 mins on it all this week. Mini Piwi has taken to asking to go on Starfall.com when Miss K is on IXL.

 

 

I have a Spectrum test prep book ready to go too. So many homeschooling moms have recommended this to me.



 

 

Talking of multiplication, this weekend we are going to use the Christmas Multiplication freebie from The teacher in Me. Ms. Mills you saved me a lot time with this cute printable, thanks!!

 

 

 

 

 

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Christmas Science Fun

 

What our 2nd grade looks like

 

Hands on Math week 1

 

 

 

Hands on Math: week 1

Thanks to Pinterest I found the Math Coach's corner. Seriously, what did we do before Pinterest?
Ms. Donna is a K-5 instructional Math coach and posts a lot of her great ideas for getting kids to understand and enjoy Math. Inspired I decided to try and do a hands on Math project each day as well as our regular Math lesson. Miss K was not a fan of math last year and while Math in Focus has helped her attitude it could still use some help! I really want to show the Piwis how math is used in the real world.
We only did it on Monday and Tuesday this week because Miss K came down with Bronchitis. Poor thing wasn't up to much for the rest of the week.

The Math projects are part of 'Team Piwi' which is what we are calling the activities the Piwi's can do together.

Monday:

Miss K needed to find a way to fairly sort 12 Jellybeans into three jars. She did this and then explained how she did it mentally by looking at them and seeing 3 groups of 4. We then wrote it down together and I explained it as an introduction to the concept of division.
While I worked with Mini Piwi on her version of this activity, Miss K, completed the fraction component of the lesson to review what we were talking about last week.

Mini Piwi sorted her Jelly beans by color and then we counted them. Sorry for some reason this picture rotates when I upload it!

Tuesday 

Last week we began with Grade 2 Metric measurement in our Math in Focus Curriculum. To practice  Measuring skills we set up an experiment to test how far differently folded paper airplanes would fly. I love doing the measurement units because it Math AND science. It has inspired me to begin working on a Lapbook.
I had thought about doing it outside with water balloons but it was pretty chilly this week and Mini Piwi is still getting over her cold. We found different paper plane folding instructions and made several each.

Throwing the first plane from the starting line

Measuring the distance the plane fly and learning the importance of using the ruler the correct way up

 


 

Metric Measuring: Length

When we arrived in the US, the non metric-ness (not the best grammar) really caught me off guard. Teaching inches and pounds last year was a bit hair raising to be honest. The only thing I can relate to in imperial measurement is sewing, hemlines and seam allowance. Thanks to my amazing Nana that's how we learnt to sew. Love you Nana!
Anyway, I was extremely relieved that this year Miss K was onto metric measurement! I am going to have to start tutoring myself on conversions between metric and imperial for next year I suspect.

We started with length this week and made our own meter 'sticks'. You can print them off here.
Printable meter sticks and tape measures. We colored them in while talking about the increments on the 'stick' and them set off to measure things. The task was to find 3 things that were less than a metre, 3 more than a metre, 3 more more than 2 meters and 3 about a meter.

It was a busy time with Piwis running all over the house. Perry the cat did not appreciate being measured, nor categorized.